He stressed to the jury that “it’s just not fair to label somebody, a corporation, a criminal” based on decisions made by intentioned engineers struggling with historic records issues and complicated regulations.

It’s easy, he said, “to prosecute a logo with a slogan.”

Prosecutors, Bauer said, had sunk to using such “slogans” as “profits over safety” that offered “no context, no interpretation -- just slapping around sound bites.”

At the heart of the case, she said, is the evidence that PG&E’s had knowledge that it was obligated to perform costly pipeline inspections under the government regulations.

“There is ample evidence that PG&E knew what the code required,” West said, yet its engineers “intentionally or voluntarily did not do what the code required.”

West pointed to documents related to dozens of apparent instances where PG&E failed to earmark pipelines it considered at-risk for costly inspections that regulations call for should pressure surge above allowed levels.

The regulations, she said, call on operators to pump high pressure water to check for damage following such surges.

Instead, PG&E put a policy on paper to avoid such inspections and carried it out by not inspecting. She said that one engineer testified that the company had opted to “wait” and thus not earmark or prioritize those lines for proper inspection.

She scoffed on the suggestion that the engineers were somehow confused by what was called for under the regulations. She said it is clear that “over means over” and that any amount of pressure surge on at-risk line must trigger the costly inspections.

“They weren’t confused – they were only confused for litigation purposes,” she said, noting that the company’s representatives never sought guidance from regulators about the regulations either before or after the San Bruno gas explosion.

While the regulations dictated costly tests, West said, PG&E stuck to its largely ineffective but cheaper method to check for pipeline corrosion, known as external corrosion direct assessment or ECDA.

The method cannot inspect for damage inflicted during pressure surges, she said – only high pressure water or automated devices that verify lines are not damaged by pressure surges.

When federal regulators started asking questions after the San Bruno blast and the company faced an audit, she said, PG&E disavowed its policy of only inspecting lines following gas pressure surges of ten percent beyond allowable levels.